Momentary Alters

NKN Gallery, Melbourne 2016

Artist statement

'I stood before it and for the first time that day I felt something'

Momentary Alters is a painting exhibition by Lottie Consalvo exploring moments of reverie and awe.

The feeling of awe or ah!-ness that enfolds us when encountering the beauty of a situation, object or person. Within it there is seemingly no past or future, only the present moment. There is no distinction between body and mind. It can overcome us unexpectedly, heightened by an understanding of its inevitable passing.

The paintings in this exhibition abstractly depict stones and arches often symmetrical yet extended gestures in the building of vastly empty spaces.

Consalvo continues to mine her interests in psychological shifts and how places and images alter our consciousness. Making reference to spiritual places such as stone arrangements, religious alters, public and private shrines and natural phenomenas such as waterfalls, great heights and the blurring shift in the act of falling.

Through this body of work the artist investigates the simplicity of form. Consalvo looks at how the assertion of a vertical line differs from a horizontal, how an arch pointing towards the sky differs in mood of that pointing toward the ground and how these subtleties affect the viewer; joy, melancholy, tension and the sense of reverie being the pinnacle of altered states of consciousness.